I don’t think it has meaning to consider two companies “related” when one is founded by an employee of the other. The relation between “Microsoft” and “Stack Overflow” seems very shallow to me; Joel Spolsky worked 3 years at MS, so what? Given the size of this firm, a large portion of people have worked, or done an internship at MS, that doesn’t mean that every companies they participate in is somewhat “related”. Same goes for Apple, Google, etc.

It would be more meaningful if only high-level executives where considered : if one of the co-founder of a company creates a company, that’s a relation.

The information contained in the graphic is very useful to someone interested in the history of computing, the Internet and the web. I would like to see this expanded to make it even more comprehensive, and also kept up-to-date as an ongoing contribution to the history of high-tech business. It deserves a site to itself.

Good work.. for starters. I’m a dinosaur from the days when the “Geneology of Silicon Valley” charts were updated annually. These kinds of charts are great, in general – they preserve a bit of history.

My only complaint is that I prefer company founding dates to determine order top to bottom, left to right. But what is art?

I hope several of you readers are inspired to explore variations of your thesis!